


children of the atom

by wildlings (candybank)



Category: NINE PERCENT (Band), 偶像练习生 | Idol Producer (TV)
Genre: M/M, will update the tags as it goes??idk, xmen au :pp
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-17 08:20:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14828732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candybank/pseuds/wildlings
Summary: The New School for Gifted Children is an institution dedicated to the protection of humankind, and a premiere training ground for a new generation of mutants.





	children of the atom

**Author's Note:**

> i challenged myself to reach 3k words in one sitting i cant feel my fingers anymore but i am: so proudof myself this probably doesnt make sense but i tried enjoy ! +beta WHO we dont know her

 

> **_MUTATION_**. it is the key to our evolution. it has enabled us to evolve from a single-celled organism into the dominant species on the planet. this process is slow, normally taking thousands and thousands of years. but every few hundred millennia, evolution leaps _forward_.

 

"we interrupt your regularly scheduled program to deliver breaking news," rang urgency from the tv screen in the break room. without lifting a finger, wenjun switched all the television screens in the mansion to the same channel and raised the volume. "a deadly standoff between local law enforcement and an alleged mutant child is currently taking place in the infamous Shandong Rehabilitation Center for Mutants. roads have been blocked by authorities and civilians have been advised to..."

all seven-years-old and curious, linong stood, carried his chair across the room and climbed onto it to squint at the screen. standing in the middle of a wreckage, surrounded by guns and police cars and fire, he saw a boy who looked no older than himself, with red hands and fire shooting from his fingertips. he appeared to be yelling. linong squinted more in an attempt to read his lips, barely getting a chance because xukun was lifting him off of his seat and putting him back down on the floor in the very next second.

“you might fall, nongnong,” xukun spoke in concern.

“i won’t,” linong answered confidently, taking a seat like the obedient child he was.

“it appears the x-men have arrived on scene,” the reporter spoke as the camera panned to a jet landing on site. out stepped three of their teachers, all 20,000 acres of the mansion erupting into cheers and applause.

linong beamed in awe, clapping his little hands, eyes sparkly with admiration.

as he watched his teachers approach the boy, all heroic and amazing, he thought to himself, with just enough luck—and he had plenty—he would become just like them someday.

 

-—

 

justin stopped in the doorway of his dorm, surprised to see headmaster li, professor zhang, and a completely unfamiliar boy standing in the middle of the room.

“justin,” ronghao greeted him with a warm non-smile, beckoning him closer and welcoming him into the conversation with an extended hand.

with a friendly smile, he approached them. “what’s up, profs?” he tried not to eye the boy beside him—failing miserably. to his defense, his very special school didn’t exactly get new students every term. he couldn’t help himself. to him, every addition to their big family was another opportunity for him to make a new friend.

“this is fan chengcheng,” ronghao introduced, and justin guessed he was pertaining to the unfamiliar boy.

it took everything in him not to gasp, or yell, or simultaneously combust. fan chengcheng was infamous, after all. _firestarter_ , they called him _._ the talk of the town ever since he was seven and broke free from a mutant rehabilitation center. arson, surprisingly, was one of the lighter cases on his record.

some people called him a criminal, others a hero. and there justin was, being told by the headmaster to call him _fan chengcheng_.

“ _firestarter_ ,” justin couldn’t help mumbling.

“just chengcheng is fine,” the boy answered aloofly, eyes shifting as if he was either totally rude or completely incapable of eye contact.

justin gave him the benefit of the doubt.

“he’ll be your roommate from now on,” yixing told him.

a big, bright smile spread across justin’s face. he immediately bowed, took chengcheng’s hand and shook it vigorously.

“great to meet you! big fan, big fan,” he greeted, all friendly, barely stopping to notice how weird he sounded with context, and forgetting the thousands and thousands of questions he wanted to ask.

ronghao patted his back. “ah, wonderful. we’ll leave you two to it, then. chengcheng, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask justin,” he said warmly, before exiting the room with yixing and closing the door behind them.

“yup,” justin nodded, rushing over to the empty bed pushed against the right side of the room to remove the mountain pile of clothes he had built on top of it. “all questions, send ‘em my way. expect answers within two to three business seconds.”

justin chattered as he cleaned as much of everything as he could. by the way chengcheng stood and looked bored, it seemed as if he didn’t entirely care about his new _friend_.

“sorry about the mess,” justin chuckled, trying to move as fast as he could, “i didn’t know i was getting a roommie. if i had known…” he stopped mid-sentence to look up and see his new roommate standing in the exact same spot he was standing in when justin walked in.

“uh,” justin scratched the back of his neck. he had no experience with new roommates, after all. even less experience with convicted criminals who had a reputation for burning down entire cities. he wanted to ask chengcheng so many questions: why are you here? where’s your sister? do you like chocolates—please answer correctly? and if the answer is yes, can you change it to no? instead, he asked, “where’s your stuff?”

“i don’t have any,” chengcheng responded, giving justin a huge relief when he finally moved, walking from his spot to the bed and sitting down.

“oh…” justin answered awkwardly, looking around and hatching a bright idea. “well! we can share stuff, if you want!” he volunteered, fetching a pencil container from his desk and symbolically placing it onto chengcheng’s desk. symbolism a habit he had picked up from zhengting. “i mean, until you get your own things and everything.”

chengcheng stared at justin, at the cylindrical item stocked with pencils that justin had placed onto his desk, then back to justin.

a bead of sweat dripped down the side of justin’s face.

“sure,” chengcheng finally answered, all quiet and almost monotone, “thank you.”

“no prob!” justin replied immediately, smiling and happily plopping back down onto his own bed. “dinner starts in about an hour,” he spoke as he glanced at the clock on the wall, nodding once before turning his attention to the stack of unfinished homework waiting on his bedside table. with a quiet sigh, justin lifted the heap of papers and the book onto his bed and began trying to do work.

“what are you doing?” chengcheng inquired.

justin looked at the papers scattered around him. “uh,” he answered intelligently, “homework.” he smiled brightly. “this is a school, after all!

welcome to The New School for Gifted Children, by the way!”

 

-—

 

chengcheng was a quiet kid. he went about his day as inconspicuously as he could, and sometimes, he disappeared so easily that it was as if he was better at being invisible than Invisiboy (to which Invisiboy, also known as Li Xikan, took offence.) his behavior only served to intrigue the school population even more. him and his sister were _known_ to have a flair for the dramatics, after all. playing games with authorities, terrorizing citizens with creative video clips of threats and ransoms, wiping out entire populations.

news of his arrival spread quicker than zhangjing’s feet ran. the very next day at lunch, justin’s friends were pummeling him with questions about his new roommate. what’s he like? is he scary? did he burn down your room? did you meet his sister?

he answered each and every question, firing responses as if he were playing a speed round on his favorite television quiz show. for justin so loved watching television that he gave every second of his begotten free time to keeping up with his shows.

“BEEP!” he echoed his favorite buzzer noise, “time’s up. we are no longer accepting questions. this answering machine is closed for business. try again tomorrow.” his friends sighed and bowed their heads.

“what’s going on?” zhengting arrived, wrapped up in his boyfriend and smiling brightly as he always was. hands interlocked and grossing everyone out, zhengting and xukun sat down.

zeren sighed, for some reason voluntarily resisting the urge to call them disgusting for being halfway on each other’s laps all the time—usually wenjun had to rub his back into it. “firestarter is justin’s new roommate,” he replied helpfully instead.

“oh, i heard about that,” zhengting nodded. and zeren found that he was unable to look away from his friend. he chalked it to up to curiosity about how big and sparkly and perfect zhengting’s teeth looked from where he was.

and he continued to stare, and stare, and stare. so completely captivated by zhengting that he couldn’t even hear anything he was saying. he was distracted by the way zhengting’s mouth moved when he spoke, how pretty his lips were, how gracefully his eyelashes fluttered. it was as if zeren was watching him in slow motion with cheesy music playing in the background.

the next thing he knew, zhengting was grinning at him. “you’re drooling,” he teased. zeren wiped around his mouth to make sure he wasn’t. zhengting laughed.

“i replicated yanchen’s ability for enhancement class,” zhengting told him, “guess who got an A.”

zeren threw him a glare and breathed off his temporary inebriation. “copycat,” he spat.

zhengting threw a muffin at zeren’s head hard enough for a chocolate chip to bruise.

“OW!” zeren exclaimed. zhengting stuck his tongue out. if it wasn’t for wenjun grabbing his wrist to sit him back down, zeren would have leapt across the table and strangled the daylights out of zhengting’s smile.

not that he was pacified for too long. the second wenjun turned his attention back to his food, zeren disappeared from his seat and reappeared behind zhengting. he yanked zhengting’s shirt hard enough that he fell backwards out of his seat and onto the grass. by the time gravity got to him, zeren had teleported back to his seat and transported a slice of cake into his mouth.

“OW!” zhengting parroted, nerve-endings firing almost all at once, cells rearranging, and in the very next moment, he had disappeared from his place and reappeared behind zeren to do the exact same thing to his friend that his friend had done to him. he yanked zeren by the shirt and out of his seat. however, only ever mimicking power and not control, zhengting couldn’t disappear as fast as his friend had. zeren had all the time in the world to get up and run at zhengting, almost toppling back onto the ground when zhengting disappeared just as he pressed his entire weight into the air for a tackle.

like a child, from the far distance he had teleported himself to, zhengting laughed loudly, running and disappearing and reappearing as zeren sprinted to attack him. they chased each other across the vast garden, none of their friends even looking because it was something that happened far too often.

xukun sighed, getting up from the table to go after them. “zhengting! baby!” he called, breaking into a jog, “stop it! you’ll lose a finger again!”

justin watched him disappear, his attention caught by something else entirely: his roommate walking past the chaos, holding a paper bag of mcdonald’s and looking entirely lost.

“brb,” justin tapped the table before sprinting away.

“stop talking in code! it’s dumb!” xinchun called after him, but justin had jogged too far away to hear.

“hey, chengcheng,” justin greeted.

“hello,” chengcheng greeted back with what almost looked like a smile. whatever microscopic display of emotion he was certain he had seen, justin took it as a victory and used it to encourage himself.

if he was being completely honest, trying to make chengcheng laugh was like trying to entertain a rock. over the few hours they had been together, the thousands of jokes justin had cracked and the hundreds of conversations he had tried to initiate, he had found himself, on more than five occasions, wondering deeply about whether or not chengcheng had lost control over his facial muscles and reaction nerves;

to justin, that the expression on chengcheng’s face twisted into something that almost resembled some vague emotion was a big win.

“mcdonald’s?” he asked of the paper bag in chengcheng’s hand.

“oh, uh… yeah,” chengcheng replied almost awkwardly, raising the bag as if to give justin a better view, “jieqiong called me in for a meeting and i missed lunch. so, she drove me out and bought me food.”

that chengcheng called pinky, their hand-to-hand combat teacher more popularly known as _pinky_ for being one of the most legendary martial artists to ever live, by her real name and said she bought him food all in one breath knocked the air right out of justin’s lungs. he was so starstruck that he almost didn’t know what to do. his hands felt useless at his sides, and he knew he had paused too long for any reply to chengcheng’s statement to seem normal.

“… jiastin…?” the only thing that snapped him out of his head was the mispronunciation of his name and the tilt of the head that came with it.

chengcheng was, in a word, _endearing_.

it was a brave and controversial opinion to have.

after all, like the rest of the world, justin grew up watching _firestarter_ and _supernova_ —supervillains extraordinaire, bad mutants to the extreme—on the news, never on for anything good, always being accused of crimes so heinous they had names he couldn’t even pronounce. he knew chengcheng was a cold-blooded killer, dangerous and powerful and responsible for the loss of thousands of lives.

but there was nothing about the way he talked, or walked, or moved that made justin think he was the same boy he had seen on his television screen.

if he was being completely honest, chengcheng seemed… _innocent_.

justin kept his lips sealed about it, of course. in all his effort to be polite, he hadn’t even asked chengcheng one question about his life—or, at least, the life he led before being taken in by school.

“yeah, sorry,” justin checked back in, saying the first thing that came into his mind: “do you ‘wanna sit with us?” he jabbed his thumb in the general direction of his friends. chengcheng peeked, finding that a boy with blonde hair was already looking at him.

quanzhe knew exactly what was about to happen, that justin was about to bring chengcheng over andthey were about to engage in small talk, but he told no one, and stuffed a piece of chicken into his mouth, instead.

“… sure,” chengcheng smiled.

over the moon with excitement, and completely disappointed that he wasn’t able to capture the moment on video, justin smiled a bright smile and looped his arm around chengcheng’s. “great! come on, let’s— _ow_!”

as if he had been burned—which, he had been—justin yanked his hand away so fast it gave his joints whiplash.

chengcheng’s eyes went wide with surprise, so overwhelmed with the suddenness of everything that he didn’t even notice the paper bag of food in his hand burning into ashes.

“i’m sorry!” he exclaimed, reaching out to touch justin without thinking. and justin, flight response still turned up to maximum, backing away from him.

“justin?” wenjun called softly, approaching the little commotion with xinchun and quanzhe in tow. he looked at justin with concern, and eyed chengcheng warily. “is everything alright?”

and chengcheng knew he was innocent, that he had no control over his abilities, but one glance around himself met, what looked to him, like a thousand angry eyes. chengcheng knew he hadn’t done anything wrong, but the way people were looking at him made him feel as if he had, as if he was about to, as if he was _supposed_ to.

“i-i’m sorry—” he spoke despite his confusion and innocence.

justin opened his mouth to speak, but wenjun cut him off.

“it’s fine,” wenjun answered, sounding entirely cold as he examined where justin had been hurt. as expected, the damage was almost entirely gone, but the facts did nothing to make him back down.

“i’m okay, wenjun. really. see? all better,” justin said, turning his arm this way and that and kissing it repeatedly to prove it.

“i’m sorry—” chengcheng repeated, “i can’t control it, i just—“

wenjun turned to him, gaze accusing him of something chengcheng knew nothing about. “ _what_?”

“i—“

“what is this commotion all about?” came the warm voice of the headmaster. out of habit, everyone but chengcheng turned towards him and bowed. when he saw everyone around him with their heads dipped, chengcheng attempted to copy them, but the headmaster’s hand was already on his shoulder.

one momentary look at the scene—and a quick peek into justin’s mind—was more than enough for ronghao to know exactly what had happened, and exactly what needed to be done.

“the five of you, come with me,” his wise old owl gaze passed over chengcheng, wenjun, justin, xinchun and quanzhe, before turning to the rest of the students around them. “everyone else,” he spoke just slightly louder, “resume your lunch and return to your classrooms on time.”

at his word, the crowd dispersed. at his step, all five boys followed. they walked after ronghao back into the mansion and up to his office in a quiet, neat file, like ducks in a row waddling after their mother obediently.

what they would never know was that li ronghao had gotten into their heads, and he had done it so well that nobody suspected a thing. not even wenjun, who had good control over his ability and was highly resistant to tricks of the mind; nor quanzhe, who could predict the future, who was young, new and inexperienced, but had such immense potential that he had a mental shield working on autopilot.

secretly, he found the entire thing very funny, and was quite pleased with himself.

with his mind, wenjun opened the door into the headmaster’s office and arranged five seats in a row in front of his table.

taken out of a trance they had no knowledge they had been put under, the five boys took a seat.

in his chair across the table, wordlessly asking wenjun to lock the door and close the blinds, the headmaster leaned his arms onto the table in a way that made the meeting seem more personal.

“what i am about to tell you cannot leave the four corners of this room, at least, for now. am i understood?”

the boys nodded in unison.

“am i understood?” ronghao repeated.

the boys nodded more attentively.

he turned to chengcheng first, “chengcheng, i will tell them the same thing i told you this morning,” he said. in instant recognition, chengcheng nodded, shoulders relaxing just a bit.

he didn’t mind it, was what he thought. he had nothing to hide and he didn’t mind the facts.

“chengcheng knows nothing about his past,” ronghao spoke, voice all velvet and gentle and firm. he paused, allowing everyone to absorb his words. “now, i would like to ask of the four of you not to bring this up, or ask him about it, and to quell any questions your classmates may have about this.”

the four boys nodded in agreement.

“sir,” wenjun spoke, “if you don’t want this information to spread, or for questions to be asked, why not just… _influence_ the school population? there are barely seventy-five of us. i’m sure we’re not the only students with questions.”

“because this institution believes in the freedom of the mind, wenjun,” ronghao answers smoothly. “we will tell the others when the time is right. until then, can we count on you?”

the four boys nodded.

“thank you,” he gestured for them to exit, “do well in class.”


End file.
